how do you know so much about our lives inside the Citadels?”
“Inside the Citadels or out,” he said, “Freebloods spend most of their time struggling constantly for dominance, so they can build Households of their own. That’s the entire basis for their existence.”
“It is not the basis for my existence,” she said.
“Because you don’t want to fight?” He withdrew a wrapped object from his pack. “Somehow, I don’t think you live apart because you’re afraid of being killed by your own kind.”
“I am not.”
“Then there’s something else about your fellow Freebloods that you don’t like. Do you hunt humans?”
The direct question startled her. “No,” she said, without thinking.
“That would explain it, then.” He opened the package to reveal several strips of dried meat, and Artemis’s stomach clenched with hunger. “I knew you were different when I first met you.”
“How would you know that?”
“Instinct.”
The same kind of instinct, she wondered, that had made her trust him so quickly? “And if you had determined that I was like every other Freeblood,” she asked, “would you have let me die?”
His very green eyes met hers. “But you aren’t,” he said. “I’ve met Opiri who didn’t believe in living on human blood on principle, and others who just didn’t believe in taking it by force. Which type are you?”
He spoke, Artemis thought, as if he had engaged in long, philosophical discussions with other Opiri, and that idea was flatly ridiculous. Wasn’t it?
“Many Freeblood exiles do not know how to live without human blood,” she said. “But most do not kill.”
Garret offered her a piece of jerky. “Too bad the ones who don’t kill can’t—or won’t—stop the ones who do.”
She pushed the offered food away. “Are you so certain they have not tried?”
“Have you?” he said, searching her eyes.
“I want what is best for my—” She broke off and took a deep breath. She had no reason to tell him what she had attempted and failed to achieve in Oceanus. He would never believe it was possible.
“You hate us, just like the militiamen do,” she said, covering her confusion with anger.
“Us is a very big word,” he said. “I don’t hate you.”
He was right, she realized. She couldn’t sense any personal hostility from him. To the contrary, he was intrigued by her, genuinely interested in knowing more about her life. She was afraid to look any further.
“I am still a Freeblood,” she said.
“But you’re no rogue,” he said, setting the knife down on a flat rock beside him.
She was almost tempted to let him go on thinking that she was superior to her own people. Different, as he claimed. She found that she wanted his good opinion.
But if she let herself believe that she was better than the rest, she would betray her own principles. Freebloods only needed to be shown, guided, by one who had seen a little way beyond the bars of the prison they so blindly accepted as the limit of their lives.
Guided not by emotion, but by rationality. She didn’t need her unwanted empathic ability to tell her that Garret was controlling feelings that might have paralyzed him if he set them free. In that, they were frighteningly alike.
“Where do you come from?” she asked. “From all you have said, it cannot be anything like the local compounds.”
“I live alone.”
“Without the protection of your own kind?” she asked. “Is that how you lost your son?”
Her cruel question had been meant to provoke an unguarded response—any response that would help her understand him—but all it did was open her mind to the ache of his sadness.
“It is my fault,” Garret said quietly.
The red aura flared around him again, and Artemis covered her face. It made no difference. She wasn’t seeing it with her eyes but with her heart. And now all she could feel was his pain, his sorrow, his terrible sense of loss.
She had known loss, too. But nothing like this. Not since she had been human herself.
“I am sorry,” she said, dropping her hands from her face. “Have I convinced you that I know nothing of this abduction?”
Staring at the dried strip of meat he still held in one hand, he gave a ragged sigh. “Yes,” he said.
His simple answer almost made her doubt his honesty. But the “talent” she’d tried to bury insisted otherwise.
If she was wrong...
A fresh stab of hunger caught her unaware, and she sank back to the ground with a gasp. Garret set down his scanty meal and leaned over her.
“You’ve spent too much time talking and not enough resting,” he said.
“And whose fault is that?” she whispered.
“I should have been more careful.”
She did her best not to notice the concern in his voice, his worried frown, the compassion he should not feel for one like her. Whoever and whatever he was, son or no son, she had to get away from him. The temptation to feed was terrifyingly strong in the wake of her injuries. If she should hurt him...
“You should continue your search,” she said, turning her face away, “and I must return to my shelter to collect my things and move on before the other humans find me.”
He ran his hand up and down his left sleeve. “Your physical state is obviously deteriorating. How far do you expect to get this time?”
“Far enough.”
“And then?”
Shivering with animal desires she could barely contain, Artemis moved to gather her things. “I am going. Do not follow me.”
“It won’t work.” His footsteps were almost silent as he moved behind her. “In a few minutes you’re going to collapse.”
“Then what do you suggest?” she asked, spinning to face him. “I see no other—”
“I obviously didn’t make myself clear,” he said. He pushed up his left sleeve. “I’m offering an alternative.”
His meaning was terrifyingly clear, and suddenly Artemis was furious—at her own helplessness; at his inexplicable generosity, in spite of his valid
